Media: Dulac's Hans Christian Andersen

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 6 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about golden age illustration.

Collecting golden age illustrated children's books can be a difficult and frustrating process. It's hard to know just how many color plates a book should have. First editions might have had thirty or more color plates; but with each subsequent reprinting, the number might have been reduced to twenty, twelve, eight or four. Modern reissues might contain all of the plates, but the color balance and detail in the reproduction is usually nothing like the original. First editions are always the best, but they can be very costly, selling for as much as a thousand dollars or more for a volume in good condition.

For the past twenty years, I've been collecting these books... on a budget. I look for damaged bindings or torn text pages that will reduce the value. As long as the illustrations are all present and in good condition, I don't care how beat up the rest of the book is.

For a long time, I've been wanting to get ahold of an original printing of Edmund Dulac's most famous book, Andersen's Fairy Tales. However, the cost of first editions with all 28 plates was prohibitive. The other day I was searching through abebooks.com and with some clever search terms, I discovered that there was a German printing of Andersen's Fairy Tales that contained all of the plates I was looking for. Since it was in German, the price was a fraction of what an English or American first edition would cost. Needless to say, I didn't hesitate!

This book is very important, so I am going to be posting all 28 plates in two postings. Here is the first half...
















For more beautiful illustrations from this classic book, see... Dulac's Hans Christian Andersen Part Two.

If you have an interest in golden age illustrators like Dulac, Rackham and Nielsen, you will want to browse the galleries at nocloo.com. The webmaster, Minh Lai has digitized a wide range of books, and has generously provided high resolution scans to the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive for inclusion in our database. Visit nocloo.com, and come by the archive on Tuesdays and Thursdays to browse the media database.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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